May 28 - First Day at the Resort
Today was a day full of fun. We weren't bright eyed and bushy tailed until about 9:30 for breakfast. We truly woke up in a different world. Last night when we came we couldn't see anything in the dark. Just knew that we were somewhere with warm water and swim up bars. Turns out this resort is tucked away in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by mountains. After breakfast we went to explore the resort and hot park. There were countless things to do including hiking, fishing, kayaking, zip-lining, swimming, floating on a lazy river, slides, a thrill of a ride called the half-pipe, paint balling, mini golf, zumba swim class (we thought it was a dance party), and many others that we probably didn't know about because we can only translate so many things from portuguese. We met a 20 year old student of Faculdade de Agronomia Eliseu Maciel last night by the name of Ítalo Machado Cunha. He is from Dom Pedrito which is in the state of Rio Grande Do Sul, the most southern state in Brazil. He helped us out in ordering food and drinks and trying to tell us the prices of different activities. Communication was slow and our English is much worse since we've had to speak in very slow English with a mixture of some spanish words. Some Brazilians know a little bit of Spanish so that's helpful. Being an agronomy student he wants to work with his dad who sells seeds to Dow Agrosciences, Bayer, Monsanto, and others. We tried to do all the activities at the resort but there just isn't enough time in the day. At about 7 pm we went back to the hotel to meet our cattle host, Pedro, and his family. Dr. Skaar's birthday is Sunday the 29th so we got him a cake and had a little celebration. We then went down to the little town where there were a few shops with various foods and then after that we went back up to the hot springs to hang out (they're open 23 hours of the day). That is about all for today. It was good to have a day off to relax and do some fun activities in the resort. The picture below doesn't do this place justice.